In the magneto-optical disks as a magneto-optical recording medium, grooves for guiding a light beam irradiated to the magneto-optical disk have hitherto been formed concentrically or spirally. At the time of the recording or reproduction of the magneto-optical disk, the tracking control of the light beam irradiated to the magneto-optical disk is performed based on the reflected light from the grooves of the light beam which was irradiated on the magneto-optical disk. As a consequence, in the magneto-optical disk, data is recorded on an area (hereinafter referred to as a land) between grooves at the time of the recording, and data recorded on the land is read out at the time of the reproduction.
Incidentally, in an magneto-optical disk such as this, with the object of enhancing the recording density there has been proposed a magneto-optical disk where signals are recorded on both a groove and a land and thereby a wide recording area is assured. When a magneto-optical disk such as this is reproduced, however, cross talk from nearby grooves or lands becomes a problem.
As a method of reducing this cross talk, there has been proposed an optical method and a signal processing method. In the optical method, three light spots are irradiated on the magneto-optical disk, and when the signal on the groove (or land) is reproduced with the central light spot, the signal on the land (or groove) is reproduced with the light spots before and after, thereby eliminating the cross talk caused by the signal component of the land (or groove) included in the reproduced signal. On the other hand, in the signal processing method, the cross talk included in the reproduced signal can be eliminated by improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SN ratio) of the reproduced signal with Viterbi decoding.
However, in the aforementioned optical method, since three spots are irradiated on the magneto-optical disk and the signals on adjacent lands or grooves are reproduced, there is the problem that the pick-up structure becomes complicated and is increased in size. Also, the signal processing method has disadvantages in that the circuit structure becomes complicated. Thus, either case has still been unsatisfactory from practical use as a solution of eliminating the cross talk.